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TL;DR:

  • The Beatles’ “Ticket to Ride” is too chilled out for its own good.
  • The song could have been darker if only the chorus was altered a tad.
  • A darker version of the song might have resonated more with younger generations.
"Ticket to Ride" era Beatles in black-and-white
The Beatles | Central Press / Stringer

The Beatles‘ “Ticket to Ride” is a fine song but it could have been so much better. Notably, the change in question was very simple. In addition, revising the lyrics would have made sense, given John Lennon’s songwriting style.

John Lennon revealed what he did to songs Paul McCartney wrote for The Beatles

The book All We Are Saying: The Last Major Interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono includes an interview from 1980. In it, John elaborated on his role in The Beatles.

“My contribution to Paul’s songs was always to add a little bluesy edge to them,” he revealed. “Otherwise, y’know, ‘Michelle’ is a straight ballad, right? He provided a lightness, an optimism, while I would always go for the sadness, the discords, the bluesy notes.

“There was a period when I thought I didn’t write melodies, that Paul wrote those and I just wrote straight, shouting rock’ n’ roll,” John continued. “But of course, when I think of some of my own songs — ‘In My Life,’ or some of the early stuff, ‘This Boy’ — I was writing melody with the best of them.”

The Beatles’ ‘Ticket to Ride’ would have been better if the lyrics were more bitter

“Ticket to Ride” has a great melody and it’s far from a bad song. What it really needed was a little more of John’s trademarked sadness. It’s cliche for a pop chorus to have three identical lines and a different line. The chorus for “Ticket to Ride” repeats the line “She’s got a ticket to ride” three times before ending on the line “But she don’t care.”

It would have been so much edgier and more memorable if John had written “She’s got a ticket to ride / But I don’t care.” That bitterness would have made the song feel more urgent and honest.

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‘Ticket to Ride’ doesn’t seem to appeal to listeners as much as other Fab Four songs

For a song about a miserable parting of ways, “Ticket to Ride” is sonically pretty chill. If the song was about John deciding he could do without the woman in his life, the tame instrumental would have, ironically, been more brutal. “Ticket to Ride” could have been the musical equivalent of Clark Gable saying “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn” but instead it’s a little too safe for its own good.

Some of The Beatles’ huge singles like “Yesterday” and “Hey Jude” are still ubiquitous today. On the other hand, “Ticket to Ride” is fading into the ether. If the tune was a little darker, it might have resonated more, especially since younger generations love the dark pop of Melanie Martinez and Billie Eilish.

“Ticket to Ride” isn’t perfect but luckily, The Beatles gave us many other perfect songs.

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